We "lava" homeschool projects!

Last week we enjoyed doing a project in Astronomy to help up get an idea of what Venus might be like. Since Venus is really HOT...like 850 degrees all the time...it also has lots of volcanoes and lots of lava. So, we took some time to make lava and then let it dry to see how rocks are formed from lava. It was really fun! First we melted some butter on the stove. Anli had a WONDERFUL idea to add food coloring to it so that it would be red! Great idea!
Then, we made a volcano with some flour and then put an upside down small custard cup to make the volcano shape. We weren't really studying the volcanoes themselves...but the way rocks would form from the lava on Venus.

Then, they took turns pouring our lava into the top of the volcano so that it would run down the sides.

Pretty cool...

After a few days we had hard "volcanic rock" that we could kind of break apart into rocks. It was pretty neat! We love our science curriculum called Apologia!! It has such a strong creation background that we really get some good information.

On thing I have learned that I didn't know is that Venus spins in the opposite direction of all the other planets. The book reminded us that if all the planets were formed from a cosmic "big band" in the universe then all the rocks from that blast would spin the same way. It doesn't make sense that only ONE planet would spin in the opposite direction. Never thought about it!

We are loving this curriculum and we are ALL learning so much!